


The Lysistrata Project

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-03
Updated: 2006-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-03 21:15:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teyla sat alone in the mess hall, nursing a cup of the strong, dark drink that those from Earth seemed to like so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lysistrata Project

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to say this is the most cracktastic thing I have ever written. But that would be a lie. Since I have, however, blatantly lifted the plot of this from the play Lysistrata by Aristophanes, it is safe to say that it is not without crack. Please blame it on verstehen, for whom this was written, and at whose insistence this is posted. I know I do.

Teyla sat alone in the mess hall, nursing a cup of the strong, dark drink that those from Earth seemed to like so much. It was always quiet here at this time of day, mid-afternoon, between the hurried bustle of lunch and the more relaxed clamour of dinner. Teyla liked to come here in the afternoons when she wasn't occupied with a mission or training. While it was not quite so peaceful as her quarters, it still gave her space to reflect and think without doors and walls making her feel cut off from the people and the city around her. She had grown up in dwellings small and light enough that they could be easily and quickly struck down when they went to move on to the next hunting ground, with all of her family that still lived gathered around her as closely as possible. There was something in the desire that those from Earth had for solitude that made her uneasy.

"Do you mind if I join you?"

Teyla looked up to see Dr Weir standing over her. "Certainly not."

The other woman placed her tray down on the table, then slid into the seat opposite her. Teyla raised an eyebrow slightly at the contents of the tray. Two of the large, sugary pastries that they traded for with the inhabitants of Frenza, some squares of the sweet food that the Colonel referred to with distaste as 'mocklate', for some reason, and a mug of coffee large enough to satisfy even Dr McKay. For someone whose eating habits were normally the exact opposite of McKay's, this was a very large afternoon snack indeed.

Teyla looked up from the tray to see that Weir had reddened slightly. "I know, I know," she said, "But I spent most of the morning negotiating a treaty with the leaders from MX1-529, and two hours telling Rodney and the Colonel exactly why they couldn't use the puddle jumpers for anything of that sort."

Teyla nodded in understanding. On their last mission, she had been treated to an in-depth explanation of what Dr McKay referred to as The Plan, which was related to some other practice that he referred to as Wooing. She had long since learned that whenever the doctor was audibly capitalising words, he was probably working his way up to something even more potentially catastrophic than usual.

"And that was before I received a very irate transmission from the head of the settlement on UÃ­ Crain, demanding compensation for two priestesses who were allegedly deflowered by one of our teams"—Weir's mouth twisted as she said this—"not to mention the fact that it looks like Dr Kavanagh activated one of the Ancient computer programs which accidentally managed to ritually marry him to one of the very tall, very heterosexual, very _male_ botanists. We seem to be alienating more allies than we're making, Katie Brown is still upset about what happened with Rodney, and, well, after a day like that, I thought I deserved to treat myself." She grinned ruefully and picked up her coffee.

"I do not blame you," said Teyla, "Being the leader of such a city is not an easy task, especially not when inhabited with such people as yours. I am often led to believe that Dr Zelenka's assessment of many of them is correct."

"Oh? What would that be?" Weir said as she took a careful sip.

"That they are all led by their dicks."

She raised an eyebrow as the other woman inhaled sharply and choked on her coffee. "Did I say something wrong?"

"Unfortunately, no, that's probably a fairly accurate assessment. It's just that some people would consider it rather—overly honest and impolite to refer to something like that in that manner."

"Oh," said Teyla, "I see," while she mentally filed it away under yet another thing she didn't understand about these people.

There was silence at the table for a few moments, broken only by the muffled noises from the kitchen as the mess staff started to get ready for dinner. Teyla drank the last of her coffee, and thought about what Weir had just told her, while the other woman gave into her sugar cravings and tried her best not to think thoughts which were surely inappropriate for any expedition leader to have.

After a minute or two, Teyla cleared her throat. "Doctor Weir, I do believe that there is something we could do which would help save Atlantis' reputation as a trustworthy and dependable ally. It is a technique which my grandmother and her predecessors sometimes had recourse to, and I believe it always worked well."

"Please, call me Elizabeth," the other woman said as she pushed her now empty plate away. "And tell me more."

* * *

Since the Daedalus had begun to operate regularly between Earth and Atlantis, bringing in new supplies and personnel, the female contingent in the city had more than doubled. When the women from the ship were added in, it made for a crowd large enough that it barely fit into the room that Dr Weir had commandeered for the purpose of tonight's meeting.

The crowd control problem wasn't helped by the fact that a large proportion of the men of Atlantis were gathered outside the door, wondering loudly why they weren't allowed access to the room, and why exactly a meeting for just the women of the city was required.

"This is discrimination, you know," said Rodney. "You can't honestly mean to shut us out just because we all happen to have penises!"

That just earned him a grin from Cadman from where she was blocking the doorway. "Oh, I wouldn't say that was why we were stopping you from entering, McKay." She laughed when the man started to turn a funny colour. "Besides, this is for, you know. Women's things. Issues. Touchy-feely crap. Stuff you guys wouldn't be interested in."

"You let in Zelenka!" Rodney snapped.

"Actually, Rodney," Zelenka said as he slipped past the lieutenant, "I was invited into room in order to turn off Ancient monitoring devices, and also to remove bugs which you had hidden most incompetently throughout room.

He dumped a small pile of tiny listening devices into Rodney's hands, as well as a couple of slightly larger video cameras. "Hidden inside light fixtures? Is too James Bond villain even for you, Rodney. You are forgetting that in many things, I am much more intelligent than you, and that in most things, my mother raised me oh so many times better than yours ever did." He patted Rodney on the shoulder, then trotted off down the hallway with a satisfied expression on his face.

"Damn straight," said Cadman with a grin, before stepping back into the room, and letting the door slide closed.   


* * *

  
Inside the room, Teyla and Elizabeth were standing at the far end of the room, where the floor sloped gently upwards in order to form a kind of natural dais. Elizabeth waited until some kind of silence had fall over the women who filled the room, perched on the tiny Ancient stools they'd requisitioned, like Miko Kusanagi, or sitting cross-legged on the floor, like Kate Heightmeyer, or leaning against the wall at the back of the room like Laura Cadman.

"I know you're probably all wondering why Teyla and I called you all here this evening," Elizabeth began. "It's because of an issue which has arisen over the last couple of months here in Atlantis. Ever since we've begun stepping up our off-world expeditions, there has been a marked increase in the number of incidents which have compromised the safety and security of Atlantis, and potentially the well-being of those of us in the city as a whole. I am talking about incidents of a—romantic and sexual nature."

Elizabeth paused to take a deep breath. No one spoke out loud, but there was a quiet hum of agreement, and she was almost certain that she could hear someone near the back of the room say "Amen, sister."

"Teyla and I have both come to believe that these distractions are endangering our team members, and are potentially damaging those relationships which have already been established between members of the expedition here on Atlantis. When we are all so far from home, and so reliant on one another, I can't believe that this is a state of affairs which we can allow to continue."

From her seat on the floor, Katie Brown spoke up sadly. "I've hardly seen Rodney in months, ever since they found that Ancient ship being guarded by that Amazon tribe on Pylos."

"And every time Carson returns from vaccinating temple prostitutes on some backwater planet—"

"I believe the correct term is Wives of the God," Elizabeth murmured diplomatically.

"—he's barely here for five minutes before he's off helping more babies and stray animals and space hookers."

"I do not believe that many of these women have been checked for STDs either," said one of the French biologists darkly, a good-looking redhead who had been ensuring her country's intergalactic reputation with Ronon for some weeks now. "I have read many of the mission reports of the SGC; I know what can happen."

"All this frustration isn't a good thing," Cadman continued. "Did you know Supply is running out of AA batteries?"

That made the undercurrent of conversation break out into a full-throated roar, as every woman in the room started nodding and agreeing and sharing stories. Elizabeth held up a hand for silence. When the women had settled back once more, she continued. "I believe that Teyla has come up with a way for ensuring that we can remedy this state of affairs."

She nodded at the other woman. Teyla stepped forward, shaking her hair from her eyes and looking out at the other women. "Something similar has occurred once or twice in the history of my people, when the call of the portal of the Ancestors became too strong, and our men went hunting for things which they should not.

"My grandmother, and the leaders before her, realised that the best way of dealing with this was to harness the territorial nature that all of us possess. If our men know that there is something which was once theirs, but which is now no longer available to them, it will become even more desirable to them than that which is theirs for the taking."

"What exactly are you suggesting?" said Kate Heightmeyer.

"That we all refrain from engaging in any kind of sexual intercourse with the men of Atlantis until such time as they come to their senses," said Teyla.

"I think I'd rather take my chances with the space herpes," Cadman said flatly.

* * *

Over the next few days, the men of Atlantis noticed a change in the behaviour of the women in the city. Uniform tops were unzipped just that little bit more, perfume was used more freely, and there was more hair flicking than any reasonable man could be expected to ignore.

Rodney even had the dark, dark suspicion that underwiring was being employed.

What was worse, none of the women would so much as give them the time of day any more. Not, admittedly, that he'd exactly been living it up as the lothario of the Pegasus galaxy before that, but this was a whole new level. This involved all of them. This involved Cadman refusing to eat lunch with Carson, Marie-Justine locking Ronon out of her room for the fifth night in a row, Miko refusing to run any more errands for him in the labs. That was just wrong. It was more than wrong, it was _cold_. It was Sam 'Go Suck On A Lemon' Carter cold.

"Have you noticed anything, you know, odd going on lately?" he eventually said to Colonel the following Tuesday.

John looked up at him from beneath raised eyebrows. "Odd in the sense of we're living in another galaxy under constant threat from a race of space vampires that look like Ziggy Stardust on crack, or odd in the sense of that mission to the planet with the five-foot tall raccoons and the jello?"

That had been a really weird mission.

"Neither, really. I'm talking about the way the women are behaving lately. Have you noticed that? I mean, yes, okay, I mightn't have your Kirk-like success rate with women—"

"_Rodney_."

"—yes, yes, whatever, you're not Kirk, but you have to admit that if I'm Spock, I should still be expecting some kind of action. He had that whole mysterious alien reserve thing going for him; lots of women find that hot."

John turned to the next page in _War and Peace_.

"And it's not just me! Even Ronon is getting turned down lately, and he's built."

"Rodney," said John evenly, trying his utmost to bury himself in the retelling of the Battle of Borodino, "I'm not sure if you've ever heard of it, but there is this little thing called 'Don't ask, don't tell.'"

"I didn't mean it like that, you idiot; what, has the five pounds of hair on your head finally caused your brain to overheat? No, I mean that if Ronon, who's practically been voted Mr Pinup Atlantis by every hormonally-charged cretin in the place, can't get his girlfriend to give him the time of day, then something is wrong."

"Yeah, McKay, sure. All the women are out to get you. They have a plot and a secret password and everything," John said with a roll of his eyes.

"Actually, Colonel Sheppard," said Zelenka, his voice floating up from beneath the console he was working on, "Rodney is correct. Dr Weir has told me what is going on."

"I am?" said Rodney. "Well, of course, I am, but—I am?"

"Well, not about there being a secret password, though apparently they did all swear oath and wash it down with liquor that Athosians distil on mainland."

"That stuff that tastes like a cross between slivovitz and battery acid?" said John appreciatively. "Man, that is some good shit."

"Uh, getting away from the topic here," said Rodney. "What, exactly, did they swear an oath on?"

Zelenka wriggled his way out from beneath the panelling. "Is very simple. All the women in Atlantis think us men are thinking with what is in our underpants instead of what is in our heads. They are not happy. They feel neglected. Also, they do not feel safe at thought that if penis could develop opposable thumbs, would be just as capable as you lot at running Atlantis. So until men of Atlantis decide to change for the better, they are withholding all sexual intercourse or romantic gestures."

He grinned at the sight of Rodney, speechless for once. "See? Is very simple."

John just quirked an eyebrow. "That's confidence boosting," he said.

Rodney opened and closed his jaw a few times before he could make any reasonable attempt at speech. "That's— that's impossible," he managed.

"No, Rodney, is improbable. Is difference."

"Well, even if they have decided to refuse to—you know," Rodney said, waving his hands around in a gesture which either meant 'have wild and orgiastic sex' or 'wax the car vigorously, grasshopper', "it's not like there aren't other women in the Pegasus Galaxy. Thousands, millions of women!"

"Dr Weir has already spoken to leaders of all the planets we have already visited, and they have agreed that there will be no fraternising of any kind, not even to what Americans call base number one. No missions to new planets will be authorised while ban is in effect, and all new destinations have been locked out of dialling computer."

"Does she honestly think we're that weak? We can outlast that, that's—" snorted Rodney.

"She has also arranged for one of women with strong natural gene to initialise program in Atlantis mainframe which scrambles all the many gigabytes of porn which team members may have, uh, forgotten to erase from hard drives before coming to city."

"_What_?" shrieked Rodney.

"Nice," said John. "What?" he said to Rodney's look of betrayal. "I can appreciate a good strategy when I see one."

Rodney glared at him, tilting his chin upwards in his most belligerent manner. "Oh shut up. And get over here, I'm going to need your gene to regain access to all those files."

"No way, McKay," said John, propping his feet up on the console in front of him, and returning to his book. "You think I'm going to go against the entire female population of Atlantis on this one? I may have flown a nuclear bomb into a hive ship, but it's not like I have a _death wish_ or anything."

"Fine," Rodney snapped, turning his attention back to the console. "I'm sure I can figure this out myself. It will just take me a little longer. And you," he said to Zelenka, "you can stop sniggering right this minute."

"I am not sniggering, Rodney. Am only maybe mildly amused."

Rodney's eyes narrowed. "I'm not so convinced. How _did_ you know about all this anyway? None of the other guys I spoke to could figure out what was going on, and we've been wracking our brains over this for days."

"Oh, Rodney," said Zelenka with what looked suspiciously like sympathy on his face. "You really don't know anything about women, do you? I simply _listened_ to them when it was obvious that they have problems."

He patted Rodney gently on the shoulder before he left the room. The sound of John's laughter followed him down the corridor.

* * *

Rodney would never have termed himself a gossip. He was, in fact, very good at keeping secrets when necessary. The SGC had never really needed to use any of their copious confidentiality agreements to keep him in line, he always kept his most truly revolutionary research under wraps because he just knew those Russian bastards would try to steal his Nobel Prize from right out under his nose if they could, and he'd still not told anyone about what had happened to the Colonel on the mission to the place they still affectionately referred to as Planet Penthouse.

All that aside, though, it was perhaps true to say that when he became aware of some really interesting information, especially information about the people he lived in very close proximity with, that he was more inclined to share what he knew. Especially if that information could be used to prevent a potential crisis.

And he was pretty sure that a life without sex for the men of Atlantis, not to mention the Athosian men on the mainland, was a pretty big crisis.

Even Halling was starting to lose some of his hippy-Jesus laid-back cool.

"That's wicked!" said Carson when Rodney told him at the conference he'd called (_Urgent! I mean it this time!_, the e-mail title had read.) "They can't really mean to—can they? All of them? Even Laura?"

"Shit," Lorne said. He'd really thought he'd had a shot with one of the new botanists.

"Huh," Ronon said.

"Obviously, we can't let this continue," Rodney said. "Them being all bubby and flirty and, and, pink, on purpose, and then refusing to act on it. I'm pretty sure there's some kind of UN Convention against this sort of thing. It's definitely cruel and unusual punishment."

"What are you planning on doing?" Lorne said. "If I know Dr Weir and Teyla, I don't think they're going to make it easy on you."

"You're kidding me, right?" said Rodney. "Elizabeth and Teyla may be, well, okay, yes, formidable is probably the right word. But between all of the male scientists, we've got more than a little brain power, and I know you marines are supposed to be all about the tactics and the strategy, right?"

"For the last time, McKay, I'm Air Force, not a marine."

"Yes, yes, same monkey, different uniform," Rodney snapped. "The point is that if we put all our resources together, we should be able to beat them at their own game. How hard can it be?"

There was a pause.

"I think," said Ronon, trying out one of his new Earth idioms, "that we are all very screwed."

"Actually, lad," said Carson, "I'm terribly afraid that that's what we're not."

* * *

On the eighth day, Rodney's team worked together with the staff of the mess to put together a romantic dinner to try to appease the women. They imported fresh food from the mainland, opened some of the faintly tart, fizzy wine they'd traded for recently, and lit each table with dozens of the tall, scented candles that the Athosians produced. Rodney had hacked into the intercom system to pipe some of the soft, instrumental music that he loved into the room, and Zelenka had even given into Rodney's whining and strung together hundreds upon hundreds of spare Ancient LEDs to create makeshift fairy lights. They looped and curled their way around the walls of the mess, framing the soft glow of the Ancient stained glass.

John amused himself for nearly a full hour by switching the lights on and off with his mind.

"Oh, that's _mature_," Rodney sneered.

The other man frowned for a moment in concentration, then grinned as the lights lit up in one rippling wave after another. "Cool, a Mexican wave."

"Oh, yes, that's the kind of romantic gesture that's going to bring the women around," Rodney answered. "A recreation of one of idiotic, pointless rituals that the common-or-garden Northern American Neanderthal man engages in, now with _lights_. All we need now is a breakfast burrito and some of that watered down piss you people call beer, and this would be truly romantic."

John shrugged. "I kind of thought so."

In the end, only one woman appeared in the mess hall that evening, Maria Chen, one of the linguists not long since arrived on the _Daedalus_. She grinned when greeted with the sight of a mess hall filled with candles, romantic music, and a couple of hundred men all dressed in freshly laundered and neatly pressed BDUs.

"Don't mind me," she said, snagging a couple of bottles of wine from the cooler that was set out near the door. "We've just run out of alcohol, and I need to restock."

"We?" said Rodney, "Is, uh, is no-one else coming to dinner tonight?" The rest of the men were all facing hopefully in her direction.

"You didn't hear?" Maria said as she backed towards the door, arms full. "All of us women are having a sleep-over tonight in one of the meeting halls in Section 3."

"A what?" Rodney repeated.

"Oh, yes," Maria said, pausing in the doorway for a moment and flashing him another startlingly white grin. "Big sleep-over. I'd really better hurry back; the pillow fights will be starting any minute, and I'd hate to miss that."

Both Rodney and Lorne felt entirely justified in letting their heads drop forward with a thump against the table.

* * *

On the eleventh day, Teyla organised self-defence classes for some of the female scientists, many of whom had arrived in the Pegasus Galaxy with little more than basic weapons training. In order to help them move freely through the exercises she set them, she lent many of them some of her spare sets of workout clothing. Nothing, apparently, was capable of shutting men up faster than the sight of a dozen or so women sparring together while wearing nothing more than a leather bodice and a clinging skirt.

"It helps them feel more comfortable," Teyla explained, "to be able to move their bodies against one another without the restriction of their normal clothing."

"Uh huh," John said, his mouth unusually dry when he spoke.

Damned Atlantean salt air.

* * *

On the twelfth day, Ronon left the neatly dressed and butchered body of a young deer outside the door to Marie-Justine's quarters.

It took her twenty minutes to snap out of a fit of hysterics; it took Rodney even longer.

"Because seriously, yes, I get the whole seven years in Tibet thing you've got going on here, with the running and the Conan the Barbarian thing, or, ha, Ronon the Barbarian if you want to make some really obnoxious puns, and then there's the unholy fixation with the leather and the Mad Max hair, and I can see how it would work for you; but are you really so horrendously under-socialised that you don't get that women tend not to appreciate finding animal carcases on their front door step first thing in the morning?"

Ronon shrugged. "In Cíttara, the province where I grew up, bringing a person the first fruits of your hunt is a sign that you wish to begin a true courtship with them."

"And you thought that would work _here_? You actually thought 'dismembered deer carcase, there's an idea!'?" Rodney snapped.

Ronon shrugged again. "Worth a shot. Not like anything else you've done is working out."

Rodney sighed, and crossed his arms together. "Point," he conceded.

* * *

On the fourteenth day, Elizabeth exchanged a conspiratorial grin with Teyla in the control room. "I think they're beginning to crack."

* * *

On the fifteenth day, Laura Cadman stormed into her boyfriend's quarters at an obscenely early hour of the morning. "I'm cracking up," she snapped when Carson eventually woke up. He'd barely been in bed an hour, having spent nearly two days straight in the infirmary trying to deal with SGA-4 and the aftermath of their trip to a planet which had been disturbingly similar to something out of the _Planet of the Apes_ ("The _Burton_ version," Major Lorne had spat in disgust while Carson was setting his legs.), and for about five minutes could only stare blearily up at Laura.

"What? Tadpoles? Who? ...what are you doing, love?"

"What I am doing," Laura snapped, as she rifled through the Ancient version of a chest-of-drawers, "is reaching the end of the line when it comes to this entire mess. I never thought I'd get sick of the sight of a Rampant Rabbit, but all that stopped me from throwing it out of my window today is the fact that my quarters are directly over Colonel Caldwell's."

She extracted two ties from the drawer—a bright yellow one, and one spectacularly ugly one covered with the clan tartan of Carson's mother's family—and stalked over to the bed. She straddled Carson's legs and then leaned forward to pull his arms over his head. "I mean, they're all well and good," she continued, "but they're not really all that tactile, are they? I miss chest hair, Carson. I miss _friction_."

Carson swallowed carefully. "Laura, love. Are you sure you're feeling alright?" he said in the voice he usually reserved for the patients who had been exposed to alien hallucinogens. Or for Rodney.

"No, Carson," Laura replied as she used the neckties to secure first one, then the other of Carson's wrists to the bed. "Right now, I'm not alright. I'm really fucking horny." She inspected the handiwork of her knots carefully, then slithered back down the bed, kicking off the bed covers as she went. Then she gripped Carson's hips, lifting them up with one hand while she pulled his boxers off with the other.

Her boyfriend whimpered slightly at the look on her face. Part of him found it really, really hot; another part of him was watching the way she was eyeing his erection and was telling his balls that they'd better retreat to a place of safely very, very quickly.

She leaned forward again, stretching herself out over Carson's body until she was almost, almost, almost touching him and his hips were twitching upwards in a vain attempt to meet hers. He fought back a whimper as her head bent forward and she whispered in his ear.

"Which is why, Carson, you're going to tell your little friends to roll over right now, or so help me god I will go insane, and you will never have sex. Ever. Again."

Then she rolled off him and strode out of the room in an exasperated flurry of red hair, without so much as a backwards glance.

* * *

At lunchtime on the fifteenth day, one very frustrated geneticist stormed into the mess hall and over to the table where Rodney was working his way through about three MREs.

"You, laddie," Carson said, pointing a finger at the other man, "are going to fix this thing right now. You are going to go to Dr Weir and apologise on behalf of all of us and say that we were all terribly, terribly wrong. You are going to _fix_ this."

Rodney froze in the middle of shovelling a large helping of lasagne into his mouth. "Carson? What are you—is that rope-burn on your wrists?"

* * *

On the seventeenth day, Elizabeth gave the order that would connect the 'gate on Atlantis to the 'gate in the SGC for their monthly check-in. These check-ins weren't really so necessary since the _Daedalus_ had started travelling between the two galaxies, but Elizabeth and General Landry had both decided that this routine was still important; it reminded those on Atlantis of the place they used to call home, and that they were still trying to protect, and it helped the SGC to remember that they were facing problems in three galaxies.

The routine had become so familiar, one of the few dependable things in the daily life of Atlantis, that she had a hard time preventing herself from startling when the wormhole collapsed backwards into a rippling blue pool and the video screen displayed, not Landry's genial smile, but a grin of a different order altogether.

"General O'Neill!"

"Dr Weir! Don't you sound pleasantly surprised to see me."

"I am, of course. I was just expecting to talk with General Landry. Is everything all right back there?"

"Oh, it's all just jim-dandy," O'Neill replied. He stepped back a bit from the camera, letting Elizabeth see slightly more of the SGC control room. Unusually for a general, but typically for what she knew of the man, he was in a worn old pair of BDUs. Even more typically, she could see a tall, bespectacled figure hovering somewhere in the background which she knew had to be Dr Jackson. "Hank had a... thing in Washington. The Joint Chiefs, the President, all that good stuff. I was around, figured I'd pick up the slack while he's away."

"I see," Elizabeth said with a smile. "It's good to talk with you regardless, General."

"Likewise, I'm sure. You all getting on okay out there? No impending invasions, apocalypses or Jell-O shortages we should know about?"

"No, we're all fine as far as provisions go, and the Wraith aren't currently active in any nearby sectors."

O'Neill raised his eyebrows. Long years as the leader of SG-1 had clued him in to when there was an unvoiced "but" at the end of a sentence. "But?" he said.

"We've just been going through a brief period of social upheaval," Elizabeth said after a pause.

The man's eyebrows reached his hairline. "Social upheaval? Are we talking on the scale of one of those civil wars we seem to help start an awful lot, or on the scale of Teal'c discovering _Sex and the City_ and the other assorted delights of HBO?"

In the background, Elizabeth could see Dr Jackson wince elaborately.

"Somewhere in between, actually."

"Should I ask?"

Elizabeth hesitated once more; all her many year's experience as a negotiator still hadn't taught her how to tell a USAF general that she had authorised an embargo on sex for the people under her command.

"For the past two weeks, the womenfolk of Atlantis and of my people's settlement on the mainland have refused all sexual congress with the men of this world as punishment for the poor judgement which they have displayed on offworld missions in recent times," Teyla replied instead.

Elizabeth repressed something that was half a grin and half a wince. In the viewscreen, she could see the general's eyebrows shoot up again, and his head tilt to one side slightly in a questioning way.

"Oh, you _must_ be Teyla," he said.

Teyla inclined her head gravely. "Indeed. I am Teyla Emmagan, daughter of Tegan. I am honoured to finally meet you."

"The resemblance is kind of spooky, don't you think?" O'Neill called over his shoulder to Daniel Jackson in a stage whisper. "Two of 'em in two different galaxies?"

"Jack," was the only answer, vowels drawn out in a way which made disapproval clear.

"Yeah, yeah," he said as he turned back to the camera. "Anyway you really," he waggled his hand sideways in a gesture of indeterminate meaning, "banned the funky monkey? No horizontal mamboing of any description? At all?"

"We've got a very dedicated team," said Elizabeth, keeping her face admirably straight. "They're very goal oriented."

"For two whole weeks?" O'Neill repeated, who had been stationed in some pretty remote bases himself in his time and knew that most members of the USAF were hard pressed to keep their hands off one another for two hours at a stretch.

He wasn't even going to go near the Marines.

"It was an interesting two weeks," Elizabeth conceded, "but we got through it without any casualties—"

"Except for Sergeant Gonzalez," Teyla said.

"—except for Sergeant Gonzalez, but Dr Beckett says that his rash will clear up very soon. The male representatives, along with Teyla and myself, came to an agreement a couple of days ago which we feel will be perfectly capable of solving their problem, and ours."

"You're telling me you collectively withheld sex for two weeks and it _worked_?"

In the background, Dr Jackson muttered something.

"What now, Daniel?"

"When we are winding thread, and it is tangled, we pass the spool across and through the skein, now this way, now that way; even so, to finish of the war, we shall send embassies hither and thither and everywhere, to disentangle matters."

"_Must_ you quote Oma at a time like this?"

"Oma didn't say that," the other man huffed. "I mean, I know it might sound a little like her, but it was—no, forget it, no, I'm not getting into explanations with you. Let's just say that some things I've know wouldn't make me think that it's that far-fetched, okay?"

"Ah," O'Neill nodded sagely. "I know what you mean. Sha're really that much of a ball-buster?"

Jackson was still sputtering incoherently when the other man pivoted back around to face the camera. "So, this withholding sex as a human resource management tool thing," he continued. "We've got a good half hour left in the meter; why don't you share a few tips?"

Elizabeth took a deep breath. "Well..."


End file.
